Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘Are you accusing my boyfriend of the rape? He would never do such a thing.’

‘No, I am accusing you of the sexual assault of Frieda Schorel.’

‘ Me? You are mad!’

‘Ah, Signorina Garelli. Let us explain what we have found.’

He glanced at Rhyme, who wheeled to face her. He said evenly, ‘The lip and neck of the wine bottle on the smoking deck contained traces of condom lubricant, which profiled to be Comfort-Sure brand. It could be associated with — forgive me. I am parsing too fine here. It matched the lubricant on Frieda’s thigh and within her vagina.

‘In my associate’s search of the scene at your apartment, she found laundry detergent and Indian food spices — you, the source of both — at the smoking station and at the scene of the assault.’ Rhyme’s lips tightened with displeasure. ‘Well, of course, you were at the smoking station, because it’s your apartment and you hosted the party. But at the scene of the assault itself? How did that happen? I should have thought of it earlier — it was my mistake to miss it. You and the victim both reported that she was climbing back onto your roof over the wall that separated the two buildings when you heard her cries for help and ran to her aid. That was many yards from the attack site. So how did curry and laundry detergent trace get to the place where she was actually assaulted?’

‘You’re mad too!’

Spiro took up the narrative: ‘We believe your boyfriend was flirting with Frieda at the party — and that they had been seeing each other off and on from the start of school — after you all met on the first day of class. You slipped the drug into Frieda’s wine. You followed her and Garry upstairs, hoping she would pass out and Garry would rape her while she was unconscious. That would be humiliating enough for her, you believed. But he didn’t; he went downstairs, leaving her alone. And you took up the matter yourself. You got one of your boyfriend’s condoms and, when the deck was empty, dragged the unconscious Frieda over the wall to the neighboring roof and violated her with the bottle. Then you hid the condom, to be disposed of later, with the others, the next day, and went about your duties as hostess.’

Rhyme knew that Natalia was the person who placed the anonymous call claiming to have seen Garry spiking the wine, and she herself would have broken into his apartment to plant the date-rape drug on his clothing; the footprints Ercole and Thom found could easily be a woman’s size.

‘Lies!’ Natalia raged, eyes flashing with pure hatred.

Spiro now continued, ‘Our inquiries as to guests at the party focused on men. We will be interviewing witnesses about your whereabouts, at the time of the rape. We have been comparing DNA with that of the men at the party. And Frieda’s other boyfriends. We will now get a warrant to compel a test of yours .’

She scoffed. ‘This is ridiculous.’ Her indignation was profound. ‘I cannot be treated like this.’

Rhyme’s impression was that she truly believed normal rules did not apply... because she was so beautiful.

Natalia rose. ‘I will not put up with this any longer. I am leaving.’

‘No, you are not.’ Spiro stood to block her way and gestured into the hall. Daniela Canton approached, pulling cuffs from her belt, then ratcheting them on Natalia’s wrists.

‘No, no! You can’t do that. It is... not right!’

Natalia stared down at her wrists, and it seemed to Rhyme that the horror registering in her eyes was not from the fact she was cuffed but that the silver of the shackles clashed with the gold of her bracelets.

Though this surely had to be his imagination.

Hopeless.

His life was over.

Garry Soames was close to crying when he left the interview room and was let out into the prison’s common area, about two acres of anemic grass and sidewalks, largely deserted at this time of day. He walked slowly back to the wing in which his cell was located.

His lawyer, Elena Cinelli, had told him that although the police were considering the possibility that he had been set up as a fall guy for the rape of Frieda Schorel, the magistrate had turned down her request that he be released, even with the surrender of his passport.

This was so unfair!

Elena had told him that two of the best forensic scientists in America, who happened to be in Naples on another case, were assisting with the evidence. But assisting wasn’t the same as proving he was innocent. Valentina Morelli, who’d turned on him so viciously, had been located and had given a statement — subsequently verified — that she had been in Mantua the night of Frieda’s assault. Suspicion had returned once again to him.

What a nightmare this had become...

He was in a strange land, with ‘friends’ who were suddenly wary of visiting him. His parents were still in the midst of making arrangements to fly to Italy (Garry’s younger brothers and sisters had to be sorted out). The food was terrible, the hours of solitude — and despair — stretching on and on.

The uncertainty.

And the looks the other prisoners gave him. Some offered sly, conspiratorial glances, as if they shared a rapist’s inclination. Those were just plain creepy. And then there were the glares — of those who seemed to want to short-circuit the judicial system and dish out fast, uncompromising justice. Several times he’d heard, in stilted English, the word ‘honor.’ Offered like a whip, lashing him for his crime of debasing a woman.

And the goddamn pisser of it all? The reason the night with Frieda on the roof, under the stars of Naples, could not have turned out to be sexual assault?

He hadn’t been able to get it up. Me, Garry Soames. Mr Ever-ready.

Kissing, touching... and he’d stayed limp as a rag.

Sorry, sorry, sorry... It’s out of my hands. I can’t control it.

A fact he hadn’t dared to share with anyone. The most shameful thing he could think of had to be kept a secret. He couldn’t tell the police, couldn’t tell his lawyer. No one. ‘No, I couldn’t have raped Frieda, even if I’d drugged her — which I didn’t. No, Old Dependable hadn’t worked that night.’

And now? What would happen—?

His thoughts were interrupted as two men appeared in the prison yard, stepping from the doorway of a wing nearby. He didn’t know the short, muscled prisoners very well, other than that they weren’t Italian. Albanian, he thought. Swarthy and forever unsmiling. They kept to themselves or hung out with a few others that looked somewhat like them. The two, brothers, had never said anything to Garry and had largely ignored him.

Now it was the same. They looked toward him once and returned to their conversation, continuing on a path roughly parallel to his, about twenty steps behind.

He nodded. They returned the gesture and kept walking, heads down.

Garry thinking: Why the hell did I go to that party in the first place?

I should have been studying.

He didn’t regret coming to Italy. He loved the country. He loved the people and the culture and the food. But now he was looking at the whole adventure as a mistake. I could have gone anywhere. But, no, I had to be the big famous world traveler, show everyone from a punk-ass suburb in middle America that I was different. I was special.

Garry observed the two Albanian prisoners moving slightly faster. They would catch up with him in the shadow of the children’s climbing wall — in a small area where prisoners could play with their children and visit with their wives on Sunday.

But he ignored them and thought again of the party at Natalia’s. He never should have left Frieda on the roof. But seeing her drowsy eyes and feeling her head on his shoulder... and feeling nothing down below, he’d had to flee. It never occurred to him that she’d been drugged and would be at risk.